Posts Tagged ‘dsiware’

Official Nintendo Magazine has previewed both Spirit Hunters Inc and the 3DS version of escapeVektor.

Of Spirit Hunters Inc the preview says, “This is a chunky game offering value for money rarely seen on DSiWare.” escapeVektor is described as “a beautiful game”.

Take a look at both previews below. You can get your hands on Spirit Hunters Inc from November 22nd. It will cost 800 Nintendo DSi Points on the Nintendo DSi Shop and US$7.99, €8 or AUS$12 on the Nintendo eShop. We’re finishing off escapeVektor now and hope to have it released by the end of the year.

Click on the images to enlarge and click on them again to zoom in. Official Nintendo Magazine is packed full of Nintendo goodness, so if you’re a Nintendo fan we’d highly recommend you buy a copy.

Spirit Hunters Inc. Remember that? Yes you do. It’s our augmented reality spirit hunting and battling RPG. We’ve been working on it for a couple of years now and we’re delighted to report it’s in good shape.

So good in fact that we took it to E3 to show journalists. Nintendo World Report are first up with their impressions of the game. They seemed to be surprised at the depth the game offers. Not a surprise to us – that’s why it’s taken us 2 years to get here!

“So when is it due for release?” we hear you shout in unison. Well, we feel confident that it will be released around the 4th quarter of this year. We’re tidying the game up, testing it furiously (and having a great time while we do) and fixing those pesky bugs which always seem to find their way into games.

It will be a downloadable title for Nintendo DSiWare, so you can hunt and battle the spirits on your Nintendo DSi or on your Nintendo 3DS through the eShop. Keep an eye on this News site for more updates and information (including price) over the coming months.

Excited yet? Go on, give us a smile. You know you want to. Just like this —>

Gizmodo Australia run a regular feature called Developer Cubed in which they focus on Australia’s up and coming dev scene. They grabbed Nic for a quick interview recently.

Nic & Bruce - the owners of Nnooo

Developers Cubed: Nnooo

by Alex Kidman

Gizmodo’s Developers Cubed series offers a behind the scenes look into Australia’s up and coming dev scene. This week: We chat with Nic from Sydney-based games developer Nnooo about why all development isn’t just iOS development and why it’s important to carve your own niche.

Developers! Developers! Developers!
It’s not just Steve Ballmer’s favourite sweat-laden catchcry! If you’d like to be featured in Developers Cubed, shoot a note to alex.kidman at alluremedia.com.au. I’d love to hear from you.

Who are you and where do you work?
My name is Nic Watt and I’m the Creative Director (and technically CEO) of Nnooo an indie games company based in Sydney, Australia

Why do we know you? What have you created?
We have created several successful franchises for WiiWare and DSiWare and are now turning our hand to the next generation of consoles with games for Nintendo 3DS and other unannounced consoles. Our most successful projects have been Pop, a launch title for the WiiWare service; Pop + Solo a sequel to Pop for DSiWare and our myLifeCollected series of applications for DSiWare which includes myNotebook, myPostcards and myDiary; finally escapeVektor our latest game was released to critical acclaim at the end of last year on WiiWare.

Our current projects include escapeVektor for Nintendo 3DS (and other platforms – to be announced) and Spirit Hunters Inc an augmented reality RPG for DSiWare and Nintendo 3DS.

Kotaku Australia have recently introduced a new feature for Australian developers called Show & Tell. When they asked for developers to submit answers to five questions describing their studio and current projects we couldn’t resist. It gave us a great chance to tell some more people about escapeVektor: Chapter 1 and Spirit Hunters Inc.

Show And Tell: Nnooo

by Tracey Lien

Welcome to Show and Tell, a (relatively) new regular that gives local Australian indie developers the chance to show their latest work, whether its a finished game or a work in progress. Today we’re speaking to an indie studio that is no stranger to the WiiWare, DSi and iOS market. Bruce Thomson from Nnooo gave us a preview of what they’re working on now.

Can you introduce yourself and tell me a little bit about your studio?

We are an independent game development studio based in Sydney, developing downloadable games primarily for Nintendo consoles. Our first game was called Pop, a bubble popping game for up to four players for the Wii. It was one of only six titles picked for Nintendo’s US WiiWare launch in 2008. We subsequently made a single player version of the game, Pop+ Solo, for the Nintendo DSi and iPhone. We’ve also released a series of personal organiser applications for the Nintendo DSi called the myLifeCollected series. The most successful of the applications, the myNotebook series, has sold almost a quarter of a million units.

After the positive reception we received from our GDC Diary blogs earlier in the year, we decided to write another covering our experiences at E3 in June.

The Kings of Geeks

In the weeks before the conference our focus was to get our games into a state where we could showcase our latest builds. We had to ensure that all the new features we had in Spirit Hunters Inc were coded into a playable state. As escapeVektor: Chapter 1 was being bug tested, we were keen to have all bugs fixed so that we could show the final version in LA.

Unlike GDC, there were no formal press interviews being set up but we were still keen to show the press the latest builds of our games. Renting a booth at the show is way too expensive for a small developer like Nnooo, and if we were to do this we would need to have someone staffing it at all times which is just not practical for us. We needed another way to reach out to our press contacts which would not cost an arm and a leg. We also wanted to meet up again with the other Nintendo indie devs who we met at GDC. We thought it would be cool if we brought everybody together in one place. Then we could show everyone what we were working on and introduce our indie mates to some press contacts. (more…)

We’ve always thought Mark Serrels from Kotaku Australia was an entertaining journalist so when he won Best Games Journalist at this year’s Australia/New Zealand IT Journalism Awards, we weren’t really surprised. We’ve been trying to get Mark round to our office for a while now but his busy schedule has made it difficult. However, he managed to find some time to visit a few weeks ago and this entertaining and informative article is the result. We really like it!

An Audience With Nnooo: EscapeVektor, Spirit Hunters And Designing Games With Post-It Notes

Australian-based developer Nnooo recently invited us to visit its studio, based in Pyrmont, Sydney, to talk game development, taking risks, and how to design a video game using Post-It notes.

Post-It notes. Everywhere you look. Impossible to escape. Covered in silhouettes, random designs, mazes, outlines. Organised in shapes. Meta Post-It notes – not just for scribbles, but for the framework of things. Master plans doused in yellow. A yellow-print.

I’ve just entered Nnooo headquarters. A handshake from Creative Director Nic Watt later and I’m drawn to the main wall of the office. I walk past in a hypnotic daze, almost cutting Nic off mid-sentence – “why are all these Post-It notes on the wall,” I mutter absently, to no-one in particular. “What do they mean…”

Another one of our GDC interviews has recently appeared online. This one is a podcast interview with the Experimental Game Dev Podcast Show (see our GDC Diary, Part 2). In it, Nic & Bruce talk about why we developed the myLifeCollected range for DSiWare and how these apps influenced the making of Spirit Hunters Inc. We also talk about Pop/Pop Plus: Solo and escapeVektor, and why we make games for consoles rather than mobile phones or PCs.

Now that Nintendo’s eShop has arrived, there is a fantastic range of highly quality, great value DSiWare titles which can be downloaded on to your 3DS. One of these is our very own Pop Plus: Solo. We think it’s a great game, full of challenging content with 8 different play modes, 4 boss battles, bonus rounds, powerups and over eighty badges to collect. But then maybe we’re biased. We did make the game after all!

If that's not enough to persuade you, why not take a look at Nintendo Life's review of Pop Plus: Solo when it originally came out for DSiWare. They scored the game 9/10, and said "It goes without saying that Pop Plus: Solo is a highly recommended purchase, there are very few other games on the DSiWare service that come close to matching the extremely high quality of this title."

Given these recommendations and the great value that the game represents, isn't it time you took a look for yourself? Go on, you know you want to!

Oh, and one last thing. If you do download it, or any of our other DSiWare software, on to your 3DS, be sure and rate it so that others can hear about it too.

As always, we really appreciate the support of our existing and new fans. Thank you all very much.

When we were at E3 in LA last week, we bumped into Corbie Dillard from Nintendo Life and we took the opportunity to show him our latest build of Spirit Hunters Inc. We had been working on getting a playable version of the game ready for E3 and this latest build is far more advanced than the one we had at GDC in San Francisco in March. We were delighted with Corbie’s reaction to the game and he liked it so much he decided to do a First Impressions feature for Nintendo Life. Here’s what Corbie thought. (more…)

We were recently contacted by the Indie Games Channel for a written interview. As well as asking Nic about the background to escapeVektor and Spirit Hunters Inc, they were keen to learn more about the game development process and the challenges of making games for different platforms. Finally, Nic has some advice for new development studios. (more…)